Stephanie Mahaney was 13 when she vanished from her family’s apartment in Springfield, Missouri, on October 15, 1997. A month later her body was found in a rural farm pond west of the city; her death was investigated as a homicide.

Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott was the first officer on the scene and remained personally involved for years, following more than a hundred leads and keeping a photo of Stephanie with him. In 2002 Tommy Lynn Sells was indicted in Missouri after confessing to abducting Stephanie from her bed, taking her to a field, assaulting and strangling her. Sells was already on death row in Texas and was not prosecuted in Missouri.

In April 2014 Arnott traveled to Texas and interviewed Sells again. Sells offered different answers from his 2002 statements, and Arnott announced the investigation would be reopened to resolve remaining questions. Stephanie’s mother, Suzette Martin, urged anyone with information to come forward.

Did anyone in Springfield or the surrounding rural areas recall unusual activity around mid-October 1997 that could help clarify Stephanie’s last movements?